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The latest example of runaway drug pricing has pitted the industrial town of Rockford, Illinois, against specialty drug manufacturer Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals. Rockford, with fewer than 150,000 residents, accuses Mallinckrodt of price gouging and another local company, Express Scripts, of failing to fairly negotiate drug prices. No matter what justification drug companies offer for outlandish pricing, there’s no escaping the higher priority they place on profits over saving lives and easing human suffering. (5/27)

Big business feasts on big government, and ObamaCare has been a bonanza for companies that have figured out how to exploit it. Witness how CVS Health is dining out on Ohio’s Medicaid expansion. In addition to retail pharmacies, CVS operates a pharmaceutical benefit manager (PBM) that acts as a middleman between insurers, pharmacies and drug manufacturers. PBMs decide which drugs are listed on a formulary, how much pharmacies are reimbursed and how much insurers pay. (5/29)

Pharma was relieved, Wall Street unimpressed and many in the political arena disappointed when, after much chest thumping, the president who “keeps his promises” came out with a surprisingly benign drug pricing policy. Compared to the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iran, China, global warming and the leadership of the free world, pharma seems a small target with a potentially large payoff. Why did the disrupter-in-chief settle for fine-tuning the drug market that everybody (other than pharma CEOs) hates? (Standish Fleming, 5/24)

President Trump is taking effective action to lower prescription drug prices and to improve the American health-care delivery system, Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Seema Verma told me recently in an exclusive on-camera interview for Fox News. The president is “not afraid of special interests,” Verma said. (Marc Siegel, 5/29)